RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Issue 29236, 21 June 1960, Page 25

RANDOM REMINDER

INTERNAL AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT

The recent brief exchange of opinions on the women’s page of “The Press” about the occupational hazards of the housewife are unlikely to have won converts from either camp to the other. Women will continue to see themselves as misunderstood, overworked, unpaid masters of a dozen trades, and their husbands as fortunate fellows who know nothing of their problems, and who come home at night when the domestic storm has abated and wonder what all the fuss is about. Men, however, inevitably regard women’s jobs as purely mechanical, —ithout the stresses and strains of making decisions, and adjudge them fortunate for that

It is all another unfortunate example of the grass being greener in the next paddock. Perhaps the occasional example of a man looking after his family while iis wife is away holds the key to the problem. Such an individual ends his period of domestic imprisonment convinced that women’s work is a push-over, or with a profound impression of how many attributes she needs. Perhaps it would be a good thing if the reverse process was tried sometimes, the women taking on their husbands’ jobs for a week or so. No doubt some would feel the wheels of industry would come creaking to a halt. Women really loyal to their sex would say the job would be better done. It is an engaging picture.

Little Mrs X, wife of a public accountant, comes home from the office thoroughly worn out after a day trying to deal with the income tax returns of those who can write their own names only with difficulty, who seem eager to provide every possible piece of irrelevant information and whose entire outlook is clearly coloured by the belief that the more confusion they can cause, the less they are likely to be required to pay. Would she really be in the mood to appreciate the embroidery her husband had started after he had set the dinner to cook? And ’ would he be upset if she failed to notice he was wearing a new tie. Things on the domestic front are sometimes difficult; but perhaps they are better as they are.